Laundry Day
by secondmezzanine
Summary: A lovesick Barney watches Robin do her laundry. Takes place somewhere during season four, otherwise no spoilers.


**Disclaimer**: Sadly, I own nothing.

He follows Robin downstairs to the laundry room on a Wednesday afternoon in late winter. For awhile he pretends to look through her underwear, even tucks one lacy pair into his pocket, hoping she'll catch him.

But she doesn't.

Robin uses some kind of laundry detergent he's never heard of (not that he does his own laundry, but he remembers plenty of details about his childhood that he should probably just forget, and inconsequentially, his mom's favorite brands of detergent have stuck). She opens the cap and takes inhales deeply, just like some housewife on a commercial might, her eyes fluttering shut at the scent of daisies or meadows or cotton blossoms or whatever that stuff is supposed to make your clothes smell like wafts over her.

She says it's some Canadian brand. As if Canadians have different products all their own and are incapable of adapting to US brands. He just leans against a dryer and snorts and pretends to play with his iPhone. Pretends to be bored. Pretends his heart doesn't flip over when she delicately tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.

A man in sweats and a ripped T-shirt—aw Christ, just Scherbatsky's type— comes in and begins pulling clothes out of a dryer and into his basket. Barney sees how they smile at each other, that flirtatious flip she does with her hair, so subtle as to be invisible, unless you've been watching her do the same thing to everyone but you for the last six months.

He stands back, his fingers gripping his phone tight enough to smash it, and watches as they step around each other, smiling their smiley smiles and flipping their flippy hair and washing their… stupid clothes and turning laundry into some kind of mating ritual of the metropolitan age. (He wishes he'd thought of it first. Pet store, hardware store, art museums… laundry, of course.)

And suddenly he feels out of place here, in this stone room with a quarter machine and these two in their soft laundry-day clothes. He loosens his tie.

When the man leaves with his basket tucked under one arm, tossing Robin a wink like it's some masculine feat, Barney shrinks back to lean against a washing machine and give her a judgmental look because it's the best reaction he can muster.

Planning to nail that guy? he asks.

I like to keep my options open, she says, and when she gently pushes him out of her way the irony isn't lost.

She asks what he's doing down here with her anyway, whether he doesn't have something better to do on a Wednesday afternoon, and he says iDays of Our Lives/i was a rerun. She points out that soap operas don't have reruns. He responds that she'd only know that if she were an avid watcher. She denies it flatly and trips over her laundry basket and he catches her like it's a movie.

You smell like Canadian soap, he tells her as he pulls her up, his fingers itching to lace through hers, and what he means is she's killing him with every misstep and breath and tiny bite of her lip and his chest hurts.

She puts a hand to his cheek and smiles sweetly and it's so fucking casual. Her lips move, sounds come out, bright and cheerful and probably some sweet-but-sarcastic jibe aimed at him but it's all muffled into clouds by the din of the machines down here. All he can think is it'd be so easy to press her back up against the wall of dryers, to let the rumble of tumbling clothes mask the hurricane that is his pulse right now, to kiss her eyes closed so she'd never give him that iwhat a great bro you are/i look again.

He turns his head not even a centimeter into her wrist, biting his tongue to keep it from darting out and tasting her skin, and stops.

Then she pats his jaw, once, and turns away.

And that's what makes him pretend to get a text and run up the stairs and into the cold, grey light of February and catch a cab to anywhere-but-here.

He wishes he didn't want to touch her so much. He wishes she wouldn't ever touch him back, because every move, every move— might as well be a dagger.

Christ, he's dramatic these days.


End file.
